Dimensions: 22 5/8 x 26 3/8 in. (57.47 x 66.99 cm) (sight)33 x 37 5/8 in. (83.82 x 95.57 cm) (outer frame)
Copyright: No Copyright - United States
Bruno Liljefors made "Moose Family Entering a Clearing" in 1930, with oil on canvas. It's like looking through fog, or memory. I can almost feel Liljefors dabbing the paint, trying to capture the hazy light filtering through the trees, those soft, gray-green strokes. The moose emerge from this blur, solid yet still dreamlike. You can see the light shifting across the ground, in a wash of warm, golden yellow, while the cool blues and greens of the trees fade into the background. There is this tension between detail and abstraction. I imagine the artist stepping back, squinting, then diving back in to add a touch of dark brown here, a highlight there. It reminds me of other artists, like Gerhard Richter, who play with focus and blur. Artists are always looking at one another, always in conversation. Liljefors invites us to see the world not as a fixed image, but as something always in motion, always becoming.
Comments
Bruno Liljefors was probably the most influential animal painter of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, at a time when wildlife art was still emerging from its association with scientific depiction and taxidermy. Liljefors's lifelong activities as a hunter motivated his close study of animal life, and in his art he approached his subject not as a descriptive narrator, but as an ecologist, seeking to show animals in interaction with their environmental setting in the landscape. Moose Family Entering a Clearing is a strong example of Liljefors's late work. Through its convincing sense of immediacy, shimmering light effects, and accurately rendered subjects, the painting demonstrates the fine line between impressionism and painterly realism.
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